Bloody hell, not again

Another piece of lazy c**p journalism, this time in the Spectator. Seeing as this exercise in weekly t**d polishing is owned by the people who run the Telegraph, you can imagine the b******s that's included.

Read what they have to say here.

Then, here's my repost to Mr Beaumont:

Where to start ripping this piece of nonsense to shreds .....

The quote you use from Bryan Roy is true, I'll give you that, albeit nigh on 12 years old, I bet you're looking forward to that millennium, eh ? And who was Bryan Roy anyway ? A semi-decent footballer who had an off season and threw his dummy out of his pram on his way out. What does he do now ? Is he a town planner ? Some kind of expert on city design ? No, he coaches kids in Holland & models boxer-shorts. Some expert.

Arthur Seaton wasn't real. He was a figment of Alan Sillitoe's imagination. Best be careful of going to the cinema if you think everything's real, best not go to the States in the next few weeks, there's an alien, looks like Keanu Reeves, got a big robot friend, very scary.

All the areas you list as no-go you've clearly picked up from ages old second hand reports. Living in one of them, been raised in another, friends in another and a relative teaching in yet another one of these areas, I wouldn't class any of them as no-go. Basford, by the way, doesn't exist. There's Old Basford and New Basford, separated by one of the busiest roads in Nottingham. Busy despite your incorrect "no-go" assumption.

Rushcliffe isn't in Nottingham. Yes it's a nice area, and yes it's next to a less nice area, but if Rushcliffe was used in the stats for Nottingham in the same way as nicer suburbs of Manchester, for example, are used by your fellow peddlers of cheap rubbish, Channel 4, then Nottingham wouldn't have appeared so far up (down) the list to start with, giving lazy journalists like you somewhere else to make stuff up about. You can't have it both ways.

John Player is still in Nottingham, although with reduced capacity, but it was a sad day when Raleigh closed. Especially that nice imaginary friend of yours losing his job. Fortunately, in its place, we now have a University campus with award winning designed buildings and the tallest free standing piece of art in the Country. Did you forget to mention that ? Or the fact that Nottingham has the highest graduate retention in the country. Forget that as well ?

The closure of the pits has hit every pit area hard, especially Nottingham. I doubt very much whether any other pit areas will have much sympathy bearing in mind the politics at the time, but why Nottingham is so singled out for this I’m not sure. And the vast majority of these areas are in the County. Yet again, changing the goal-posts to suit your story. And if you include neighbouring districts for comparison, include the counties far from unique, but successfully ongoing, struggle to regenerate mining areas, then yes, we can put a plaque up to Lord Byron. And there is one to Jesse Boot, you were clearly looking in the wrong place. If you looked at all.

Australian cricket commentators ? Underwear models ? These are your sources ? Tut tut tut.

Slight dig at Brian Clough OBE, bit under the belt ? He achieved more in his lifetime than both you or I put together will ever dream of. Poor.

You’re not the first to have a lazy dig at Nottingham, sat in your office of a Friday afternoon, bit of a deadline, stuck for a story. Then you remember. That stag-night you went on a few years back, up to Nottingham, on the promise that there’s “seven women to every man”, you had a good time, yet you went home unrequited, unloved, unwanted.

Maybe that’s the real story.